New Fraud Strategy – a serious plan built around a deeper partnership with the private sector

Background

The strategy is built around three pillars – “Disrupt”, “Safeguard” and “Respond” – but its centre of gravity is plainly the first of those. The most eye-catching measure is the new Online Crime Centre, backed by £31 million and intended to bring together the Home Office, the NCA, City of London Police, intelligence partners and private-sector participants from financial services, telecoms, technology and cyber. On paper, this looks less like a rival enforcement body and more like a permanent intelligence and disruption hub: a mechanism for turning fragmented data into faster interventions against accounts, websites, numbers and other infrastructure used by fraud networks.

This public-private model does not come from nowhere. The strategy reads as the culmination of a trend that has been building for some time. The Stop! Think Fraud campaign launched in February 2024 was already framed around coordinated messaging backed by government, law enforcement and industry. The 2023 Online Fraud Charter and the second Telecommunications Fraud Charter published in November 2025 pointed in the same direction, with increasing emphasis on shared standards, intelligence sharing, network interventions and joint prevention activity. The recent NCA-NatWest campaign on invoice fraud is another example of this expanding public-private partnership.

Set against that background, some of the key proposals in the strategy are:

• the creation of the Online Crime Centre and the continued development of intelligence gathering tools, better triage and a more operational national response to fraud;
• a much more international fraud response, with the Government committing to sponsor the next Global Fraud Summit in Vienna this month, pursue more bilateral partnerships with high-priority countries, continue using sanctions against overseas scam actors, and work with INTERPOL and Europol on joint operations and intelligence-sharing;
• more pressure on the sectors that fraudsters exploit, with the strategy leaning on telecoms, online and financial services businesses to do more, with greater accountability, further work on advertising-related risks, and reforms aimed at improving cross-sector information sharing;
• on the victim side, the shift from Action Fraud to Report Fraud as the new national reporting service from 2026, with an upgraded call centre, improved website, better routing of cases and support, and a planned Fraud Victims Charter in 2027 to set national standards on response times, care and advice; and
• a broader package of system reforms, including more use of AI-enabled tools, work on fraudulent business activity and proposals such as digital company identities and mandatory electronic invoicing for VAT invoices from April 2029.

Analysis

The Online Crime Centre as a real disruption capability

The Online Crime Centre promises to be more than just a gimmick. The strategy is clear that one of the core problems is a fractured data landscape in which different actors hold useful intelligence, but no one sees the whole picture in real time. The OCC is designed to address exactly that. It also sits alongside a new call for evidence on economic crime information sharing, which suggests the Government knows that legal and operational barriers to sharing data remain one of the main constraints on effective disruption.

More pressure on the sectors fraudsters exploit

The private-sector angle is especially important. Financial institutions have long played a central role in the counter-fraud system, but the strategy recognises more clearly than some earlier initiatives that telecoms and tech firms are also critical control points. That is sensible. In much online fraud, the decisive intervention may happen long before any bank transfer – in the blocking of a spoofed number, the removal of a malicious advert, the suppression of a fraudulent listing, or the disruption of infrastructure at source. In that respect, the strategy’s emphasis on upstream disruption feels more realistic than an enforcement model built mainly around downstream investigations.

A much more international fraud response

The international dimension is also one of the stronger features of the document. The strategy accepts that a large share of serious fraud is overseas and points to operational cooperation with countries including Nigeria and Vietnam. That is not an admission of defeat for UK law enforcement. In many cases, prosecution and disruption in the jurisdiction where the fraud factory actually sits will be the more practical and effective route. If local partners can raid the site, seize devices, arrest suspects and dismantle infrastructure, that may be a better outcome than treating extradition to the UK as the default.

The recent Agbor case in Nigeria, in which the NCA, Meta and the Nigerian Police Force supported action against an alleged scam centre targeting victims in the UK and the US, helps to show how this model can work in practice. Operation Serengeti illustrates the same logic on a broader scale: a multinational disruption effort spanning the UK and 18 African countries, aimed at dismantling cyber-enabled fraud networks and the infrastructure they rely on. Both examples are useful because they show that, where fraud operations are based overseas, the most effective result may often come from supporting enforcement action in the jurisdiction where the suspects, devices and operational infrastructure are actually located.

Where the strategy is lighter

None of that means the strategy is beyond criticism. The “Safeguard” pillar is comparatively light on operational detail, leaning heavily on education, reducing vulnerability to fraud and existing protective networks. The “Respond” pillar is also thinner than the disruption agenda, with some of its justice content relying on reviews, pilots, evaluations and already signalled reforms. Businesses may also note that the strategy is firmer on the possibility of future regulation than on immediate hard obligations. On online advertising in particular, the Government has reserved the right to legislate if partnership and market incentives do not produce meaningful improvement.

Why that may still be the right approach

Still, the fact that the strategy is not trying to do everything through criminal prosecutions is arguably a strength rather than a weakness. Fraud at this scale cannot be solved by enforcement alone. A system that is better at sharing intelligence, closing vulnerabilities, measuring sector performance and intervening earlier is likely to be more effective than one that continues to rely too heavily on victim reporting and reactive case-building.

Practical takeaways

• Businesses should read the strategy as a signal that there is a greater expectation of voluntary cooperation from business, with the threat of further legislative change if such cooperation is not forthcoming.
• Firms in telecoms, tech, payments and adjacent sectors should expect greater pressure to share data, support disruption activity and demonstrate the effectiveness of their controls.
• Cross-border fraud risk remains as much a compliance issue as an enforcement one. Globally integrated compliance frameworks, investigation protocols and a joined-up approach to self-reporting will remain vital.
• The strategy reinforces the value of strong internal fraud controls, supplier verification, invoice controls and joined-up incident response.
• For large organisations, the strategy sits alongside the failure to prevent fraud offence and the broader push to harden the UK’s economic crime framework.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a serious strategy. Some will argue that £250 million over three years is still modest against the scale of the problem, and that is a fair point. But it would be wrong to dismiss the document as thin or superficial. It is detailed, it reflects extensive stakeholder engagement, and it shows a more mature understanding of fraud as a transnational, technology-enabled threat that requires shared operational ownership across government, law enforcement and industry. The real test will be whether the Online Crime Centre and the other proposals in the strategy can translate into measurable disruption. If they can, this strategy may come to be seen as the point at which the UK’s counter-fraud model became materially more effective.

Authored by Reuben Vandercruyssen and Melody Stephen.